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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26125876">cheer for all the broken</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/notquitekaren/pseuds/amenorwhatever'>amenorwhatever (notquitekaren)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Umbrella Academy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>5+1 Things, Extra-Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven, Family Bonding, Gen, No Incest, gratuitous use of mcr/gerard way lyrics as chapter titles, gratuitous use of punctuation instead of learning how to write a concise sentence, no beta we die like ben, which isn't strictly true but i really wanted to use that tag</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:47:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,085</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26125876</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/notquitekaren/pseuds/amenorwhatever</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“What you wrote there was private,” Luther said morosely. “We trusted you and you told the whole world our secrets.”</p>
<p>“Aw, come on,” Klaus whined, patting Vanya’s leg from his place lounging on the ground. “It wasn’t so bad! I thought it was a very thoughtful and well-written memoir. Very flattering to all of us, I think.”</p>
<p>“After you read it, you broke out of rehab, went on a bender, and OD’d,” Ben pointed out.</p>
<p>Klaus screwed up his face in confusion. “Did I?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Or five things Vanya shouldn't have written in her autobiography, and one thing she should have.</p>
<p>Title from "Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>The Hargreeves Family</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>123</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. if this is a coronation (i ain't feeling the love)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Eventually, the Hargreeves siblings got back to their proper timeline. It took a lot out of Five – he spent weeks on dimensional theory and months on complex equations, pausing only to guzzle down some more coffee, snap at whichever of his siblings had the misfortune of interrupting him, and fall asleep in increasingly unlikely places. And he was constantly interrupted by another new, exciting apocalypse, always brought about by one of them being in the wrong place at the wrong time.</p>
<p>Diego kept score on who caused it each time, and soon he and Klaus started a betting pool. By the end, everyone had joined in at least once except Vanya, who was completely unaware that there was a pool at all, due to Allison’s insistence that they at least <em>try</em> to keep her calm.</p>
<p>But after talking down Lila from blowing up the moon, after alternate universe Number Two shapeshifted into Elon Musk, after that one really weird time the Eiffel Tower came to life and they had to fight it – they made it back, to where the Umbrella Academy was still standing, and Pogo and Grace waited at the door for all of them to attend their father’s funeral.</p>
<p>This time, they placed Reginald’s urn above the fireplace instead of dumping the ashes in the courtyard, and then they decided to get shitfaced. Luther, to everyone’s surprise, insisted on starting with the most expensive bottle in the house, which according to Pogo was a ten thousand dollar bottle of cognac.</p>
<p>Luther and Vanya made identical moues of disgust, while Klaus and Diego downed their glasses like shots, and Allison and Five both sipped appreciatively. Even Ben had a glass of his own, which he looked like longingly.</p>
<p>“Okay, now that we’re done with <em>that</em> important symbolic ritual,” Klaus sniffed, scooting the bottle away, “can we start drinking something good?”</p>
<p>Vanya tried one more taste of the cognac and shuddered. “<em>Please.</em> Literally anything to get this taste out of my mouth.”</p>
<p>Klaus looked around at his siblings, assessing. “Are we doing shots, or should I make a big batch of something particularly boozy?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Diego and Luther answered his questireon in unison. They looked at each other, not quite grinning, but more at ease with each other than they had previously been. Luther held his wide fist out, and Diego obligingly bumped his own.</p>
<p>Allison finished her drink and stood up, holding up the bottle of cognac and shaking it a little. “How do we feel about sangria?”</p>
<p>“Wonderful!” Klaus exclaimed, beginning to pull out the other ingredients from the bar. “Oh, I had the most exquisite sangria in ’62, when I visited this gorgeous little villa just off la <em>Costa del Sol</em>. Such a sweet family for letting me stay there. Maria Cecilia and Pilar were flamenco dancers,” he finished wistfully. Allison stood beside him behind the bar and listened attentively, smiling fondly, as she carefully sliced the fruit into bite-size pieces.</p>
<p>“He’s going to go on like this for hours,” Five complained <em>sotto voce</em>, leaning forward towards the sibling still sitting near him<em>. </em>“Vanya, do me a favor, and slice <em>his</em> throat the next chance you get.”</p>
<p>The house was silent for a moment, until Vanya let out a slightly hysterical giggle, which was quickly echoed by the siblings behind the bar. Five leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smirk, loosening his tie.</p>
<p>Ben noticed the movement and brightened, as if remembering something he had forgotten. “Hey, now that we’re back home, are you ever going to get some new clothes?”</p>
<p>“Not that you don’t rock the knee socks,” Klaus interjected, gesturing with an apple in one hand and a bottle of red wine in the other, “but maybe something more comfortable and less… uniformy?”</p>
<p>Five alternated scathing looks at the two of them. “Sorry,” he sneered, “after being stuck in the apocalypse for—”</p>
<p>“Cool it with the rant,” Luther interrupted, looking tired. “It was just a question. Ben didn’t mean anything by it.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t,” Ben agreed regretfully. “I’m sorry, Five.”</p>
<p>“Well,” Five said, lips pursed. He flashed over to the bar and poured himself another glass of cognac, before returning to his armchair. “Whatever, then.”</p>
<p>Vanya and Allison shared a significant look as Klaus carried the pitcher of sangria and round wine glasses back to the table they were all crowded around. He immediately folded himself into a seated position and distributed glasses to any empty hands.</p>
<p>Allison set down a couple of unopened bottles of liquor and some shot glasses. “So, um, unofficial family meeting time,” she started. Her usual eloquence was hampered by the inherent awkwardness of their sibling dynamic.</p>
<p>Diego groaned. “Can we not? We’ve had nothing but family meetings for four and a half months.”</p>
<p>“It’s just that,” Vanya continued, “we all have a lot of emotional issues. And since emotions are what caused the first couple of apocalypses, maybe if we talk about them like adults, it could prevent any more.”</p>
<p>Ben was nodding from his perch on the back of the sofa. “I think that’s a really great idea.”</p>
<p>“I don’t,” Five replied. “What if while we’re talking about our <em>feelings</em>, it gets too heated and one of us loses control?”</p>
<p>“We’re all adults here,” Luther countered, setting his glass down. “I’m sure we can talk about our issues without it getting out of hand.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>“Fuck you!” Luther shouted, throwing a glass to where it shattered against the bookcase, drenching some of the volumes on the shelf with red wine. Klaus, who had been trying to hold back his laughter, fell over, gasping. From his new seat on the mantle, Five clutched at their father’s urn and made a noise that, if questioned, he would vehemently deny was a giggle.</p>
<p>Allison’s mouth twitched in amusement, but she kept her expression serious enough. “He’s right, Luther,” she said soothingly, carefully taking off her shoes with the sort of concentration that only toddlers and drunk people could manage. “You really have talked about the moon a lot tonight. Maybe give someone else a turn?”</p>
<p>Diego’s eyes landed on the bookshelf and then narrowed. “Yeah, I’ve got something to talk about.” He gestured at the bookshelf with the half-empty bottle of vodka in his hand. “What the absolute <em>fuck</em> was up with that book, Vanya?”</p>
<p>Nearly everyone in the room flinched and looked at their sister with wide eyes. Even Klaus paused in his mission to commandeer Allison’s strappy heels. But her face didn’t grow pale, and her eyes didn’t glow white. She just pulled her knees close to her chest and rested her head on her knees.</p>
<p>“I just had a lot to say, and it seemed like no one was listening,” Vanya murmured, voice laced with regret. “I messed up. I should have—”</p>
<p>“You should have done a lot of things, Vanya,” Allison interrupted her with a pinched face. “I know this isn’t the most important thing, but do you know how many auditions I lost because of that damn book? It’s hard enough getting a role as a black woman, but there was a solid year and a half where I was struggling to pay rent because of what you wrote.”</p>
<p>“What you wrote there was private,” Luther said morosely. “We trusted you and you told the whole world our secrets.”</p>
<p>“Aw, come on,” Klaus whined, patting Vanya’s leg from his place lounging on the ground. “It wasn’t so bad! I thought it was a very thoughtful and well-written memoir. Very flattering to all of us, I think.”</p>
<p>“After you read it, you broke out of rehab, went on a bender, and OD’d,” Ben pointed out.</p>
<p>Klaus screwed up his face in confusion. “Did I?”</p>
<p>Diego barked out a laugh. “God, everyone at the gym was calling me ‘m-m-momma’s boy’ for months until I shut them up.”</p>
<p>Five sniffed disdainfully. “I could have personally done without some of the more purple prose about my ego surpassing my intellect, and the glorifying me as a martyr of dear old Dad’s manipulation.”</p>
<p>“Amen,” their ghostly brother agreed, but floated comfortingly in Vanya’s direction. “I don’t blame you for writing it, but you could have been a little more tactful.”</p>
<p>Five hiccupped, swaying slightly where he sat. “Plus, publishing an unredacted, tell-all book about us was <em>real </em>helpful to the Commission when they were hunting us down.”</p>
<p>Vanya huffed, pushing herself into a standing position. “I guess I’ll just g—”</p>
<p>“Sit down, Vanya,” Diego ordered. She complied, holding herself stiffly and making an expression somewhere between a glare and a pout. “You’re still our sister and we’re not kicking you out of our mope session.”</p>
<p>Allison nodded, reaching out and resting her hand on her sister’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have gotten so heated, we were just digging up a lot of emotions, you know?”</p>
<p>Klaus let out an obnoxiously loud sigh of contentment. “What a happy family we are,” he said with only a hint of irony, grabbing the nearest bottle and sealing his mouth around it.</p>
<p>Most of the Hargreeves siblings followed suit, retrieving their glasses. Luther pouted at the sodden bookcase shelves that used to be his drink, until Five flashed over to the bar to retrieve the mostly empty sangria pitcher and flashed back to his brother’s side to hand it to him.</p>
<p>“I guess we <em>can</em> talk about our feelings without starting another apocalypse,” he observed, trying to fish a wine-sodden chunk of fruit out of his newly acquired pitcher.</p>
<p>Five snorted, gulping directly from the expensive bottle of cognac. “What a low fucking bar we’ve barely managed to stumble over.”</p>
<p>Vanya finally leaned back against her chair again. “God, we should all be in therapy.”</p>
<p>“I’ll drink to that,” Ben agreed, raising a nonexistent glass in a mock toast.</p>
<p>The Hargreeves siblings laughed, and continued to drink, and said nothing more of their emotions or the book.</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <em>My name is Vanya Hargreeves, and this is my story.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I guess I should start at the beginning, shouldn’t I? Most people have heard the general story of the Umbrella Academy – eccentric millionaire Reginald Hargreeves found six children with extraordinary abilities and raised them to be superheroes. Not to nitpick, but this certainly isn’t the whole story.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>On October 1, 1989, around the world, 7 children were born to mothers who weren’t previously pregnant. And as soon as he heard about it, Reginald Hargreeves travelled the world to find those families, and adopt those children. Six of them turned out to be extraordinary; not only in the circumstances of their births, but demonstrating power that couldn’t be explained. It makes sense why Reginald Hargreeves would adopt those six, but he didn’t stop there. He adopted a seventh, who had no abilities that could be described as unusual, and raised her with the rest of them.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>And that completely ordinary child was me. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I’m Number Seven, and I am the only member of the Umbrella Academy who doesn’t have superpowers.</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. you don’t understand (we don’t hold hands)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>First up: Luther.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Luther noticed the book after dinner on an indistinct evening. He had heard about it previously, of course—he tried to keep tabs on his siblings. Some were much harder than others, but with Pogo’s help and a little bit of legwork, he knew when Klaus was in rehab or jail, when Diego was kicked out of the police academy, when Allison got engaged.</p><p>And when Vanya published the book.</p><p>He had skimmed the reviews and the summary and immediately balked, the words “tell all” and “revealing secrets” and “everything you always wanted to know” flashing across his eyes. Luther didn’t want to know what his sister had written. But when he saw it on the shelf that evening, he weighed it in his hands, wondering if he wanted to know what Vanya thought of their father, of their home, of <em>him</em>. He cracked open the cover and saw the inscription addressed to Dad, and hesitated.</p><p>Always the dutiful son, he returned the book to the shelf and instead went walking in the muggy evening air, wandering around the city in search of a still-open bookstore. Luther wasn’t used to being aimless like this, and he liked it more than he thought he would. No matter what Diego yelled at him as he packed his suitcases, he wasn’t a perfect soldier made for following orders and incapable of the thought required to do anything else. It was just comfortable—living at home, training regularly, going on missions, sticking to a routine.</p><p>Rapid footsteps broke him out of his thoughts, and he saw a slight figure darting across the street. She reminded him of Vanya, he thought absently, with thick brown hair falling past her shoulders. She glanced at him with a hint of fear and determination creased in her brow. Luther looked down at himself and noticed that his fists were clenched at his side. He relaxed his hands and stuffed them into his pockets, turning at the next block so he could put some distance between him and the lady who was clearly nervous around him.</p><p>There was a café-bookshop hybrid a few blocks down, with a hand-drawn poster advertising <em>Extra-ordinary</em>. He crossed the street and opened the door to the tinkling of windchimes.</p><p>“We close in fifteen minutes,” the barista behind the counter announced, wiping down the espresso machine.</p><p>“I’m just here for a book,” Luther said, eyes zeroing in on the shelf titled “New Releases” with bubbly lettering on a miniature chalkboard. Vanya’s book was on the top shelf, and he grabbed it and head to the counter.</p><p>The barista paused in his cleanup, punching a few buttons on the register. “<em>Extra-ordinary</em>, huh? I think my boss is trying to get the author to come by for a signing next week. You should come back.”</p><p>“Maybe I should come back,” he echoed, counting out bills to pay for the book.</p><p>He hadn’t seen Vanya in years. She and Allison had left at the same time – but Allison had made a production of her departure, with a tearful goodbye to him, a closed-door discussion in their dad’s office that ended with shouted words that no one could quite decipher. Vanya simply faded into the background, the way she always did. He didn’t notice she was gone until he was called in for a mission briefing, and she wasn’t waiting outside to wish him good luck, like she always did when they went on missions.</p><p>The barista tucked the receipt into the front of the book, and Luther waved as he left the shop. He clutched the book with both of his hands, staring at his sister’s young face whenever the crosswalk lights turned red. He shuffled over the concrete and asphalt in a haze until he was back at the Academy. Stepping into the precise and ornate foyer, suddenly cold, Luther felt uncomfortable. He took the stairs three at a time, fingers still tight around the book, and ignored Pogo as he passed.</p><p>Soon enough he was climbing out the window onto the fire escape, once again swaddled by the evening heat of the city. The moon had now risen enough to be seen above the surrounding high-rise buildings, that off-balance, bulging shape he knew to be the waxing gibbous. Between its determined light and the hazy yellow glow of the nearby streetlights, he could read his sister’s book, if he wanted to. And that, he mused, was the question.</p><p>He slid the dust jacket off the book and tossed it back inside through the window, opening the book and thumbing past the title page, the glossary, the prologue. He skimmed the first chapter – Vanya was describing how much better her life had gotten after leaving the Academy – and then turned back to the glossary to scan for his own name. His was chapter four, simply titled “Number One – Luther.” Seized with a sudden pang of uncertainty, he shut the book and stared up at the sky.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>Before he was Luther, our father named him Number One, because he decided that he would be the most useful out of all our siblings. Coincidentally, he was also the first child that Dad adopted. Luther was born in a suburb near Auckland, New Zealand, called Mount Eden. I’ve always found that funny, that Luther was from Eden. He was always Dad’s blessed firstborn, almost as if he had been created with enhanced loyalty in addition to his super strength.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Luther never asked for much – I think part of him always knew that even his unwavering loyalty was always under scrutiny in our household. But he did make a point to ask our father if he was allowed to know the location and time of his birth, and that of the rest of us. Dad had granted him permission and gave Luther access to some of the files concerning our adoption. None of my siblings even noticed the conversation, but I noticed, and the next time I got the opportunity, I asked him.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He refused to tell the truth at first, but we were siblings, and I could tell when he was lying. Eventually he admitted that he had heard Klaus talking about astrology and was confused how we all had such different personalities when we all had the same star sign. Luther, known for his brawn and not for his brain, didn’t even begin to think that maybe the zodiac was completely made up. So he researched and made astral charts for all of us.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The next three months were filled with talk of aspects, ascendants, and houses, and Luther trying to justify that all of us were textbook Libras. Sometimes, when he was particularly annoyed with Diego, he would come into my room looking like a kicked puppy until I asked him details about my chart, and about his. His something-or-another was Capricorn, and that’s why Dad liked him so much – he was disciplined and responsible. My fifth house, on the other hand, was in Pisces, which meant I feared everything and wanted to run away.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>His obsession didn’t last, of course. Once Diego found his painstakingly handwritten charts and used them for target practice, he never rewrote them. But that didn’t stop him from spending a lot of time on the roof, staring up at the night sky as if it held every answer our father refused to give him.</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>Luther did end up reading <em>Extra-ordinary</em>, eventually.</p><p>It was the only personal item he brought with him to the moon.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Chapter title from "Millions" by Gerard Way</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title from "Kill All Your Friends" by My Chemical Romance</p>
<p>10/13/20 Edit: Fixed a minor continuity error</p></blockquote></div></div>
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